I have been up and down and I am finally doing what is best for me and not for anyone else. Problem is, now that I've stopped to take a look around, I have no idea who I am. This is a journal to self discovery.

Tuesday, March 21, 2006

This Isn't 7th Grade Anymore

I write best about love, relationships, and heartache, is it because I think I’m pretty in touch with myself and what goes on around me or is it because I’m a people watcher noticing other people’s indiscretions? Or do I analyze because of insecurity? Yeh sure, I might get insecure, but don’t we all? Don’t we all question our actions at some point in time?

As we get older we are more on the fence, our decisions have greater consequences, its not like when we were young and in 7th grade. Sure at that point we would just DIE if our crush knew we liked them, but at the same time, it was ok that your crush knew. It was ok to write “I heart Gary” on your notebook because we had that shred of hope that they would reciprocate. When did things become so hard? When did we make this transition that in our heads we feel obligated to play “the game?”

Remember those days of writing notes and passing them to one another? Now we email – we hide behind emails and comments. What about having a friend get the 411 on whether or not someone liked you. God forbid that happened now! You’d be viewed as an insecure outcast.

Or how about phone calls? Remember those? Remember giving a boy/girl your number and getting so excited to be on the phone with them? Getting to know them – their likes and dislikes, what they did for fun, what sports they played, who they knew? Just getting to know through talking.

The innocence of it all, those were the days. The days that you knew when a boy teased you and pulled your pigtails, it was because he liked you. He was shy about how he felt and his face would get red. Now its an achievement just to get him to acknowledge an emotion other than horniness.

So sad that the purity of courtship we fundamentally hold close to us when we are young gets lost in the adult insecurities of games, emails, phone tag and disappearing acts. I know that as adults our priorities shift, our focus is elsewhere, its tough enough to figure out where you are in the world let alone trying to figure out how another person feels about us. Its such a sticky situation to feel trapped in the “don’t know” phase….because all you are left to do is over analyze. I hate that part.

It all shifted at some point. It all changed and became real, too real.